Until a few minutes ago I knew nothing about either Benedetti or Huidobro, but now I know a little that I like a lot. It's amazing how much one doesn't know and what books necessarily leave out (because you can't tell the whole story of everything in one place).

"but consolations and little stones

and warnings to take care and snails"

That's great. For some reason, most days lately involve encounters with snails. What on earth is that object on the beach? Part of a ship, clearly, but what? Being Uruguay, I always think of the Graf Spee.

There's a lovely post about them (the creatures that is, not our encounters) on Meliora Latent, the blog of Julia D'Onofrio, whose husband Diego Landro took these remarkable photos of mysterious objects on the beach at Rio de la Plata.

I'll ask the photographer if he can answer some of the questions... I wasn't there on that trip. I detest sunken ships, in fact. But perhaps he or my father who also was there, knows exactly what these "mortal remains" are.

Thanks for the comments om my pics.TC, thanks for making the photos look better with those great texts besides them: yours, Benedetti and Huidobro's.I can identify that strange object if you want, but maybe you prefer that it remains unidentified.

TC, now i see that you do want me to identify that strange object. Those are the remains of some signaling buoys that lost their anchors and were washed on the shore. This particular structure photographed here, the 'sea bottle' is the drum that makes the buoy float.

TC, this is the best example of a floating buoy similar to the one that is shored in Uruguay. http://www.ucema.edu.ar/deportes/confe15abr2008.htmlThis particular one is a "safe wtaer" buoy, indicating deep waters around it. The one in Uruguay was most probably a buoy indicating a way in or out of a canal for big ships. In the Rio de la Plata this is very important, because being a river with so many sediments in its water, the riverbed changes depth almost constantly, so if you don't watch carefully your buoys you end up aground.